Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Figure Skating/Archive1

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[edit] Competitor box standardization

I like the infobox at Michelle Kwan. I propose we adopt its style for all figure skater articles. --Fang Aili talk 19:54, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

It could use a picture. I take it this infobox is intended to supercede the Olympic medal infoboxes? TheProject 21:17, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Picture, definitely. Looking at various infoboxes more closely, I am not sure what to go with at this point. Kimmie Meissner's is nice too, if a bit wide. But neither hers nor Kwan's announces their sport, as does {{MedalSport}}, {{MedalGold}}, {{MedalBottom}}, etc. (See Artur Dmitriev.) --Fang Aili talk 21:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Neither does any other sport's infobox, as far as I can tell. See, for example, Lebron James, Kobe Bryant (NBA), Donovan McNabb, Vince Young (NFL), Barry Bonds, Mariano Rivera (MLB), Joe Sakic (NHL). (NHL infoboxes are sorely lacking, IMO.) It's assumed that one can generally figure out one's sport by looking at the infobox fields, or by looking at the lead text. TheProject 22:20, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Alright. Let's go with Michelle Kwan-style then, with picture, if available. --Fang Aili talk 15:28, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Oh, one more thing about the Michelle Kwan box I don't like... "Country : Federation". Is there any skater representing the United States that isn't affiliated with the USFSA? I'd reduce that to just "Country" -- it seems much more standard. TheProject 19:40, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
I prefer maintaining the existing infobox with ISU high scores because it's more current. You can use a different infobox for older, past skaters. Maintaining scores, esp. COP results, is very helpful. This is in keeping with having only the most current information quickly accessible that is the most common with all skaters. Plus it's faster to verify thanks to the ISU skater's bio. Pelladon 15:02, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Which is "the existing infobox"? Could you provide an example, please? --Fang Aili talk 15:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Template:Infobox Figure skater. —Pelladon 15:33, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm a little lost as to what's not current about the infobox at Michelle Kwan. ISU high scores are included in that box. Did you have a look at my attempted rewrite at my workbench? That also includes room for ISU personal bests and career 6.0s (for those under the old system, or both). TheProject 16:08, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand why you want to reinvent the wheel, I don't see any reason why you want to use a different infobox when much of the info is the same. —Pelladon 16:11, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Well actually I didn't realize the infobox already existed, that's why I wrote it up again. :-) I'm just wondering if you liked the changes -- in particular, the details on national/world/Olympic championships. I can change the parameter names to be the same, of course. What in the current infobox is missing from the one at Kwan? TheProject 16:18, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, someone else resized the olympic medals box to the same size as the figure skating box, so changing sizes would involve lots of reformatting for many skater's pages. A lot of work and not productive at all. Pelladon 16:28, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Changing font-size to 95% (that and cellpadding are the only differences in formatting) is not really that much of a problem, you know. The Olympic medals don't show up on the figure skater infobox unless the fields are used, so those articles that still have items entered in the Olympic infobox instead of the FS infobox would behave just the same. TheProject 16:40, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I have a better idea, just let people use whatever they want. Don't force changes. No one forced anyone to use the figure skater infobox. The authors used it. Pelladon 16:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not forcing any changes here. I'm only trying to write more functionality into the infobox. Said functionality is completely optional, and adding this functionality will not break anything. TheProject 17:11, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
The infobox is just a construct, you really can't make it fit for everyone. Adding more functionality is probably not a good thing cause you want to keep it simple to maintain. I left the competition info out because it was getting too complicated. —Pelladon 17:44, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure I follow. Adding in a few more fields is not going to make it harder to maintain than it already is. :-) Seriously though, I don't understand: what's the problem with integrating the FS infobox and the Olympic infobox? Nothing currently using the infobox will change. TheProject 18:12, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of the existing template until Pelladon told us about it. I don't completely understand the differences between TheProject's idea, the existing template, and what's on Kwan's page. But I think that Kwan's infobox works because she has had such a long career. Kimmie Meissner's (which uses Template:Infobox Figure skater) works well for what she's done so far. Thinking more on this, I don't think infobox standardization is a big deal. We can use Template:Infobox Figure skater, and if it doesn't fit the needs of the article, something else can be done (echoing what Pelladon said). --Fang Aili talk 18:48, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm actually not "replacing" anything anymore, since I've retained practically all the field of the existing infobox now. I'm only adding to it, so I'm not quite re-inventing the wheel anymore. I've now modified my workbench version infobox so that it only has the following differences with the existing one:
  • the weight field is removed, per your comments on the infobox's talk page
  • Olympic, world, and national medal data are now available (of course, like you said, nobody has to use it, but it is an option)
  • some captions are different
I did a test by previewing Sasha Cohen using the workbench template, and nothing changed except the captions, which are trivial anyways. The template isn't any harder to maintain now, so ... comment please? TheProject 18:58, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
P.S. As a response to Erica: basically, my idea now is just to expand the existing template. That is all.
That sounds perfectly reasonable. Could you provide a link to your test with Sasha Cohen? --Fang Aili talk 20:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
See my general sandbox. The top one is the current infobox, the middle one is the workbench copy with no additional fields added, and the bottom one is the workbench copy with the Olympic, world, and national fields added in. I'll leave it up for a couple of days. TheProject 23:17, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

I've updated the text at Structure. Does this meet with everyone's approval? --Fang Aili talk 20:15, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Grammar

One thing that has always confused me is Ladies vs. Ladies' vs. Women's. The ISU seems to call it "Ladies", but this is not in a possessive sense (as in, "Ladies' competition"). How should we treat these cases?

Another point of confusion is Pairs. Is it "pair skating" or "pairs skating"? In a phrase such as, "In the pairs competition, so and so placed...", is pair, pairs, pair's, or even pairs' correct?

Men's and Ice Dancing are more straightforward. It's "men's competition" and "ice dancing competition" ("ice dance" would be acceptable too).

Thoughts? --Fang Aili talk 20:06, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I've never heard "man competition" or "men competition", so it should be plural possessive all the way through: "men's competition" and "ladies' competition" (or "women's competition"). Pairs is a little more ambiguous (NBC had a possessive form for males and females during the last Olympics, but not for pairs), but it should still be plural, so either "pairs competition" or "pairs' competition". For the sake of consistency, I'd go with "pairs' competition". Incidentally, the link you've provided goes with plural non-possessives throughout (including "World Figure Skating Championships Men") but I wouldn't put too much stock into it because it's got the "Championships" before the categorization. As I said, I've never heard anybody refer to the "men competition". TheProject 21:15, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Plural possessive it is. Though I believe there is an exception in ice dancing; I have never heard it called "ice dancers' competition" or somesuch. So let's go with "Men's", "Ladies'", "Pairs'", and "Ice dance(or dancing)". Agreed? --Fang Aili talk 15:24, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. Actually, I believe ice dance is "ice dance/-ing competition" because (for some inane reason you'll have to ask an English language guru about) "ice dance/-ing" replaces "figure skating" as the sport, instead of just being the categorization -- so you'd have "figure skating competition", "fencing competition", "ice dance/-ing competition", instead of "figure skaters' competition", "fencers' competition", "ice dancers' competition".
While we're on the subject, I might as well point out that Google shows "dance competition" in much greater usage than "dancing competition", but also "ice dancing competition" in much greater usage than "ice dance competition". I'm inclined to go with "ice dance competition", just as a specialized form of the first comparison, but what do you think? TheProject 15:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I kinda like "ice dancing" because it matches the gerund "figure skating". But I think either is acceptable because they're both grammatically correct (I think). --Fang Aili talk 18:34, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikified title

Why isn't this "WikiProject Figure skating"? Rfrisbietalk 03:58, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

There's also Wikipedia:WikiProject Ice Hockey, and there were others I noticed that capitalized each initial letter. Basically I just thought "Figure Skating" looked better. --Fang Aili talk 13:16, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I noticed many other projects do this as well. It just seems all of these projects don't use standard capitalization. I won't bother to push it though. Good luck! :-) Rfrisbietalk 15:25, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] main page overhaul

I've asked User:Master of Puppets for an aesthetic overhaul the project page. Hopefully this will result in something that is easier to navigate and better looking. Any suggestions on color, layout, etc. are welcomed. --Fang Aili talk 17:10, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

See discussion between me and him here. --Fang Aili talk 18:32, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Skates

Is there no article on the figure skates themselves? I'm sure a lot could be said about the history of figure skates, what they're made of, etc. --Fang Aili talk 19:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge pairs?

Since I'm back from taking care of a couple of transwiki backlogs, I decided to take a stab at that category of stubs, and lo and behold, the first person -- Aaron Lowe -- on the list comes from the city in which I live. Anyways, so I had a look at that, and then had a look at his partner Megan Wing's article and realized -- they're practically carbon copies of each other. So are their respective edit histories, in fact.

Now, I'm not an expert on the subject (I joined this WikiProject to learn as I edit), so I have no clue whether skaters in pairs and ice dance change partners very often -- I suspect not much -- but I can tell that neither of these two in particular have not done anything notable apart from the other. Would it make sense to merge these two articles (and, I suppose, many others like it, if that applies) and fork only if one of them does something very notable apart from the other? TheProject 06:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't think they should be merged. I noticed Torvill and Dean, but they're the only pair I've seen together (I'm not entirely sure they should have an article together, since no other notable pairs do). Skaters do change partners fairly often. (I can think of Maya Usova, Artur Dmitriev, and Todd Sand off the top of my head.) Often their information does overlap a lot, but every notable person should have his/her own article, I think. (And combining all those articles would be an insane amount of work.. ;) --Fang Aili talk 15:01, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, not merging the articles would also create a bunch of redundant work instead -- every time the pair had another achievement, two identical edits would have to be made -- hence why I asked. It seems to be more along the lines of bands, where the group has their own article, and *if* various group members do something notable by themselves, then they also get their own articles. However, having an article on each partnership (with redirects) sounds awfully awkward. TheProject 17:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
You have valid points. But I think that making two identical edits is still less work than trying to combine articles. With the identical edits it's just copy and past--10 seconds, tops. With combination articles, you have to parse the individual-specific information together into something readable. Then again, when the average person is looking up a pair, are they going to search for Pang Qing and Tong Jian, or Pang and Tong? I don't know. (It'd be helpful if we had a few more people here to comment.) --Fang Aili talk 18:51, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
To be honest, work isn't actually that much of an issue. If the material is redundant, I'll take on the merge, and merging the ones that are duplicate copies of each other -- which a lot of them are -- I don't think would be too difficult. Members of a small group not notable enough to have their own article usually redirect to the group's article. So Pang Qing would redirect to Pang Qian and Tong Jian (along with a bunch of other redirects. Ashley Olsen, for example, redirects to the article on both twins). My point with the Wing and Lowe articles (and, I see, the Pang and Ton articles too) is that practically the entire article is about the pair, not either skater.
I've done a bit of thinking about the cases you raised above where people have switched partners before, and it seems to me that a) those are exceptions and b) those are cases where one partner has done something notable enough (i.e. switched partners) to merit one's own article, in which case, it might very well make sense to have an article on a partnership AND the skaters in the partnership (stats would always be in the article on the partnership, though).
The only other opinion I've heard (from IRC) is one to merge, although I do wish there were more comments here. I'm going to merge the two articles into my userspace for now. If there's no objections, then I will put it up on article space and make the appropriate redirections. TheProject 19:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
And in the meantime, I've turned the "Career" section on Aaron Lowe into a table. How does it look? TheProject 18:30, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Could you put the medal color just in the "Placement" column? --Fang Aili talk 18:51, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Done. Hope that looks good. TheProject 19:20, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, much better. --Fang Aili talk 20:18, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
P.S. See Olsen twins.

If you wouldn't mind, could you wait (perhaps a week) before merging pairs into one article? I am hoping to attract more members, and would like to get more comments before going forward with something this complex. --Fang Aili talk 19:48, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I won't be merging into mainspace for a while, that's for sure. All the merging I'm doing right now is at my workbench. TheProject 20:00, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
Excellent. --Fang Aili talk 20:17, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't merge pairs because partnerships don't last and would require endless updates. Don't generalize skaters because many have competed in singles as well.Pelladon 15:05, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I'm not saying all pairs should be merged. What I'm saying is that all skaters whose only claim to notability is as part of a pair would be merged into an article on the partnership itself. Pairs skaters who have competed in singles are inherently notable already and their article as an individual competitor would be kept. TheProject 16:14, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
In the few instances that this is true, then it should not be a problem. Pelladon 16:33, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I think we should leave it the way it is for everyone. We can't predict when someone (or a pair) will do something notable. --Fang Aili talk 18:49, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I believe not knowing when someone will do something notable is a reason *not* to have an article on an individual, if they haven't done something notable already, per crystal-ballism. TheProject 19:30, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually they're already notable if they're elite skaters. What I meant was, if they do something notable other than skating. --Fang Aili talk 19:52, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Erm, I thought the whole point of this was that they're notable as a pair, not by themselves, hence the argument for merge. If they do something notable by themselves other than skating, then an article on the individual is justified. TheProject 19:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Back to the left, continuing discussion I just don't think we should combine pairs. Skaters change partners all the time. Pair skaters become single skaters. One skater gets involved in something the other's not. Etc etc. I don't see any reason to change the way things are done now and complicate it unnecessarily. I understand your point about notability, but doing what you propose would involve merging some hundreds of articles, plus maintaining those articles and trying to keep a look-out for anything notable they might do as individuals. It's just not feasible. What we have now is fine. --Fang Aili talk 20:06, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, alright. I'm going to put in a "former partner(s)" field in the infobox. TheProject 18:55, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
Excellent idea. --Fang Aili talk 14:11, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Figure skaters at the (YEAR) Winter Olympics

I went through Category:Figure skaters at the 2002 Winter Olympics, added {{WikiProject Figure Skating}} to everyone, and added some to the to do list, as needed. --Fang Aili talk 18:03, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Infobox update

After a long battle with ParserFunctions -- and I mean, "battle" -- I've built up an infobox at my workbench. It's based on the one found at Michelle Kwan. For an example of the infobox in action, please see another article on my workbench.

Among the more notable changes, Country : Federation has been changed to just Country, and the infobox now has a place for an image. Currently, name, country, status, club, residence, coach(es) and choreographer(s) are all required fields (all of these except residence are readily available from ISU profiles), although that can be changed. Sections for Olympics and World Championships medals (actually Nationals too, although it's somewhat difficult to be notable enough for Wikipedia without medalling at least at a National Championships) are only displayed if a competitor has medalled in that event. I'll post full usage notes on the infobox's talk page in the morning. Comments, please... TheProject 07:30, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Style

Over the course of my working on the project I'm going to have a whole load of style questions, so I might as well ask.

  1. Are jump combinations (e.g. triple loop + triple loop) linked using a hyphen or a slash ("triple loop/triple loop" or "triple loop-triple loop")? Does this go for shortened generic forms (I almost always see "triple-triple", not "triple/triple") and longer forms (e.g. "quadruple-triple-double combination")? TheProject 18:41, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I like the hyphenation better (vs. slashes). So, triple loop-double toe combination, etc. --Fang Aili talk 20:56, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merging Figure skating at the Olympic Games with Figure skating at the Olympics

It seems to me that "Figure skating at the Olympic Games" is the proper title, but I like the style at "Figure skating at the Olympics" better. I can't do a copy-and-paste replace, I think, so would it be appropriate to ask an admin *cough*Erica*cough* to perform a delete-and-move? Any comments on the style of the two pages? (Oh, and the latter has one row of "special figures". Should that be included?) TheProject 20:37, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I actually like the style at Figure skating at the Olympic Games better; it has more information--the country abbreviation (e.g. USA), so if you don't know the country's flag, the country is right there. Plus the Host City column, which is cool. Sure, I can do any admin stuff. --Fang Aili talk 20:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I'm not very picky about the style. Good point about the country abbreviations. Actually, I think the only reason why I like the second style better is because every entry (except 2002 pairs) fits on one line. :-) TheProject 21:06, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
Oops, I forgot about this. Will get to it soon, if some else hasn't already. --Fang Aili talk 21:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
Done. --Fang Aili talk 21:42, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New project page layout

Feedback is welcome. --Fang Aili talk 21:27, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Love it. By the way, might as well one thing. I'm thinking of moving Canadian Championships -- new page -- to Canadian Figure Skating Championships, as that is its proper name. Is that okay?
I'll get back to the cleanups in a couple days again. TheProject 02:28, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
I was thinking that too, but there seemed to be a lot more hits for "Canadian Championships" than "Canadian Figure Skating Championships", and Skate Canada's website calls it "Canadian Championships", and they're (supposedly) the country's authority. But I don't really mind either way. --Fang Aili talk 03:35, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, but if you're already on Skate Canada's website, you're probably looking for figure skating. :-) "Canadian Championships" could mean anything from Canadian University Baseball Championships to Canadian Track and Field Championships, etc... I'll move it. TheProject 18:48, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
But USFSA still calls the American nationals the "United States Figure Skating Championships", not just "American Championships" or somesuch. I was trying to go with the Canadian competition's official name. --Fang Aili talk 16:00, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, we Canadians are lazy. ;-) TheProject 02:00, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Free picture alternatives

I ran into a fair use picture at Shizuka Arakawa, so I've started a section to find free alternatives of fair use pictures, as free alternatives are almost always preferred. TheProject 05:07, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Cool. --Fang Aili talk 13:40, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
I switched the main photo for Shizuka Arakawa but I didn't delete the Olympic medal ceremony photo because I wasn't sure if that qualifies for fair use because it's a news event. Vesperholly 21:16, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Articles_for_the_Wikipedia_1.0_project

I've added us to the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team page. This is their boilerplate text:

Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team previously contacted you to identify the quality articles in your WikiProject, and now we need a few more favors. We would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in offline releases of Wikipedia based on their importance, regardless of quality. So far we have a list of 5 articles, but are there any important topics not listed that we should know about? We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 1.0 (not yet open) and later versions. Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please keep updating your Hobbies WikiProject article table for articles of high quality (B or higher). If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us. Please feel free to post your suggestions right here. Thanks!

So what articles would we like to see on WP 1.0? I'm thinking figure skating and Michelle Kwan, for starters. --Fang Aili talk 16:06, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

In terms of people, I'm thinking recent Olympic medalists. Shizuka Arakawa looks not too shabby. Sarah Hughes looks a little short. Tara Lipinski still has an NPOV tag, but I haven't attempted to settle that in weeks (still on my to-do list). Silver and bronze medal winners too, of course... TheProject 17:31, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] prod

I just prod'ed Monica Malek-Yonan as an unsourced Olympian figure skater. I'd also like to verify claims that her sister, Rosie Malek-Yonan, is also an Olympian. --Fang Aili talk 15:48, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

According to the sources[1][2] I've read, it's a little tricky. They're both Olympians in the sense that they made the 1980 Iranian Olympic team, but after the Iranian Revolution, they were not able to participate (the government sold their rink, forced them to convert, banned them from using music -- like that was going to happen!). TheProject 16:22, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the links! I'll add info to Rosie Malek-Yonan and make a redirect from Monica Malek-Yonan to there, as it seems Monica is not otherwise notable. I don't think we need a stub article on someone who was almost in the Olympics; story can be told on Rosie's page. --Fang Aili talk 18:45, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Career boxes

I don't think I've gotten much complaint over the career boxes I've put onto some recent skaters (e.g. Aaron Lowe, Yelena Berezhnaya), so I'd like to standardize it for those articles which aren't looking all that great, ordered by year and including Olympics, 4CC, European Championships, and Worlds. Am I missing anything? Thanks. theProject 05:16, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I ran into a cool-looking medal box on nl.wp: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Grinkov. What do you think? This kind of table has the advantage of laying out the events and years in a more readable format. --Fang Aili talk 15:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Engelmann family figure skaters

I created Herma Szabo to fill out the last redlinked ladies' Olympic champion. She came from a family of figure skaters, the details of which I'm still trying to figure out. Basically I need to confirm her parentage, and whether the Christa von Szabó listed at World Figure Skating Championships is her mother. I've left messages at several German-speaking user's talk pages. My German skills are poor, but from what I've read I cannot figure out if Christine married someone with a surname of Szabo, and/or Karl Schäfer. If anyone has insight into this or a reference to an English-language link, please let me know. (Also, the various Engelmann family articles could use some copyediting.) Thanks. --Fang Aili talk 18:29, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DYK!

We got our first DYK! It's Nikolai Panin. Woo hoo!!! --Fang Aili talk 13:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of articles

I've created WikiProject Figure Skating/List of articles to help organize our efforts. Please feel free to add to it. --Fang Aili talk 20:21, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Timeline

I created a project timeline to keep track of our accomplishments. Feel free to add to it, of course. --Fang Aili talk 20:40, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Ladies" vs. "Women"

There is a point currently under discussion here. The gist of it is: User:Dr.frog thinks we should use the term "ladies" to refer to "women" in pair skating and ice dancing articles. I disagree with him. Any opinions on the matter would be greatly appreciated. --Fang Aili talk 13:26, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Eh, I thought I had the issue all figured out and was going to type out my page-long opinion, but now I'm confused. Are we talking about the event that consists of one female, or the two events that consist of one female and one male? If it's the first, then it has to do with the name of a category, and we ought to use the formal names that the ISU uses. Presumably, if the ISU were to call the females' category "apples" and the males' category "oranges", instead, Wikipedia would use those names and explain, e.g. "the 'apples' category, which is for women..." Since "ladies" doesn't exactly require explanation, though, Wikipedia would just use "ladies" and not bother to explain.
If it's the pairs and ice dancing, however, then it has to do with a piece of terminology, which, in my opinion, is a different scenario. Wikipedia is not obligated to use any one term throughout an article. Going back to the above analogy, if the ISU were suddenly to call all its females "apples", Wikipedia would note this term but presumably still use the word "women". It might be very useful to note the varying terminology in said articles, but Wikipedia should use the term that aids the text of the article the best. Usually this is the official, within-the-industry term, but this is probably an exception. "Women" works much better than "ladies" as it's much more in common usage and much less anachronistic. But that's just the way I see things. theProject 05:27, 20 August 2006 (UTC)
P.S. And now I actually read your discussion and realize I've basically restated everything you said! *grin*

[edit] Canadian Championships

I've started to add medal tables here. I've gotten the past 10 years of medalists added, and I left blanks for the rest. If anyone has time before I get to it, you can find the entire list of medalists listed in a pdf here [3]. Thanks and merci! Vesperholly 18:15, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that! I made a few link corrections. --Fang Aili talk 15:44, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Persondata

I've added {{persondata}} (see also: Wikipedia:Persondata) to all men's singles Olympic champions. --Fang Aili talk 15:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] German translation requests

I've requested translations from the German for several articles here. --Fang Aili talk 20:59, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Update: someone's working on History of figure skating ([4]). I'm trying to translate Jackson Haines myself, but I think I can find enough English-language sources to just rewrite it. --Fang Aili talk 13:23, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shortcut

WP:FS now redirects to the project page. --Fang Aili talk 22:20, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] To do list - Needs medal table

On the To do list, there are 3 articles under Needs medal table. Each of these does have medal listings in the top right of the articles. What exactly need to be done, or can the be removed from the to do list? --Gary van der Merwe 07:21, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Howdy Gary. I thought that they could use a table such as is under "Competitive highlights" at Natalia Linichuk. A table like that is much easier to read than a list of placements by year. The ones listed at To do have especially long lists. Cheers. :) --Fang Aili talk 13:08, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I've done Manfred_Schnelldorfer - Have I done it correctly? --Gary van der Merwe 14:54, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
Looks good to me! --Fang Aili talk 15:55, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Jamie Sale cleanup?

Jamie Sale's article has been listed for cleanup on the To Do list for a while now. I expanded her and Pelletier's bios and did some retroactive cleanup to my own favoritism :) but is it enough? Could someone take a look at it and see if it warrants any further cleanup? Or is that entry just out of date? Thanks much. Vesperholly 09:01, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I think it could still use some cleanup; there's fanspeak here and there. I'll see what I can do. --Fang Aili talk 15:12, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
I cleaned it up a little further. How's it look to you? --Fang Aili talk 18:02, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
Looks great. That was my first major contribution to Wiki and I was still a newbie with the tone of articles. Thanks. Vesperholly 06:29, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quality assessment scale

I have, with the help of Titoxd, added a rating ability to {{WikiProject Figure Skating}}. Most of the articles are going to be stub class. The instructions to add a rating are here. Basically you just add "|class=XXXX" after the project's tag on each article's talk page. I hope to also add an "importance" feature, and the ability to leave comments. (I've written Titoxd about that and he will probably do that for us as well--what a nice guy.) Our article stats will be updated each day by a bot, and can be viewed at Assessment, and associated pages (Index · Statistics · Log). --Fang Aili talk 18:52, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

If you think any other fields would be useful, now's the time to mention it. See {{WPBiography}}, which has a ton of fields. Since we're a small wikiproject, I figure all we need is quality/importance/comments, but any ideas are welcome. --Fang Aili talk 18:55, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
The template now has much more functionality. Click it to look. --Fang Aili talk 13:52, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article ratings

I've been rating a few articles. I've added quality according to the {{Grading scheme}}, and importance according to.. well just what I thought the importance was. I figure if a skater has competed on an international level, the importance should at least be "Mid". Skaters who have only competed at the national level should get "Low", unless they are otherwise notable. "High" importance skaters are those who have had particularly successful careers, and "Top" for the most famous skaters. Further discussion on this is most welcome. --Fang Aili talk 13:51, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Wikipedia:Core biographies says that only about 200 or so biographies on Wikipedia are to be given top-importance ratings. Now, is this a completely different form of importance scale, or does this otherwise apply to us? I'm a little confused on the whole biography rating scale myself. theProject 16:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I haven't read the Core biographies page, but I have only rated Sonje Henie "Top" for now, given her high influence on the sport. I've been rating most people "Mid", unless they're really notable. You can see how everything's rated so far here, in order of importance. We can work out some kind of internal rating guidelines if enough people are interested. --Fang Aili talk 17:19, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alissa Czisny

Hi, I'm new at this, so I'm not sure of the protocol. Is there any way to split Alissa Czisny off from her sister? Alissa Czisny is a notable skater who placed at Skate America and won Skate Canada. Amber Czisny's career is basically over. Kolindigo 02:15, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Definitely. You can go ahead and do it if you wish. Let me know if you have any questions. --Fang Aili talk 13:40, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how to. How do you rename an article? Kolindigo 14:59, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Alissa Czisny already exists, so you can go there, remove the redirect, and put in an article. Same with Amber Czisny. Then you can make Czisny Twins a disambiguation page, with links to both sisters. Make sense? --Fang Aili talk 15:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Does there need to be a Czisny twins article? Kolindigo 19:29, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
Having it as a disambig doesn't hurt. --Fang Aili talk 21:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
How do you make a disambiguation page? Sorry, I'm still figuring everything out. Kolindigo 18:08, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Quite simple. Start an article, and say "X can refer to:" and then list the various items that X could mean. (For example, Mercury could be the car, the planet, or the Roman god, or one of various places on this planet.) In this case, you could disambiguate Czisny into both twins. Just an additional thought: it may be better to leave the disambiguation at Czisny and redirect Czisny Twins there, as is typical Wikipedia disambiguation style. Feel free to ask away if you have any more questions. theProject 19:59, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Thank you. I did that. Please edit if I did something wrong. :) Kolindigo 20:27, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Terminology

Would it be worth it to have a terminology page like Tennis terminology, a place for things like popping jumps, flutzing, lipping, getting chacked, traveling spins, the kiss and cry, etc. Kolindigo 19:59, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that would be a good idea. --Tachikoma 20:57, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Yes, definitely. Great idea. --Fang Aili talk 01:50, 4 September 2006 (UTC)